History of drug use in religion

Drug cult, group using drugs to achieve religious or spiritual revelation and for ritualistic purposes. 

Though the idea may be strange to most modern worshippers, drugs have played an important role in the history of religions. The ceremonial use of wine and incense in contemporary ritual is probably a relic of a time when the psychological effects of these substances were designed to bring the worshipper into closer touch with supernatural forces. 

Modern studies of the hallucinogenic drugs have indicated that such drugs, in certain persons under certain conditions, release or bring about what those persons claim to be profound mystical and transcendental experiences, involving an immediate, subjective experience of ultimate reality, or the divine, resulting from the stirring of deeply buried unconscious and largely nonrational reactions. 

Modern students of pharmacological cults who have participated in cultic drug ceremonies and used the drugs themselves have been astonished at the depth of such experiences. R. Gordon Wasson has suggested that the religious impulse itself may have had its origin in the amazement felt by primitives on accidentally finding and ingesting plants with hallucinogenic properties while foraging for food; this view is not held by most scholars of religion. 

Whatever the psychological origins of such reactions, they are viewed as religious in nature and have been structured and channeled through cultic forms. Through cultic leaders—such as shamans, witch doctors, and medicine men—as well as through tradition, pharmacological cults have specified not only how the cultic drugs should be assimilated but also how they should be gathered and prepared; generally also there are specifications for participants’ behavior outside the ceremonies, in the practical affairs of living. 

Western observers of primitive cultures, such as missionaries, colonial administrators, and travelers, have often regarded such practices as demonstrating superstition and folly. Anthropologists and other scientific observers who have attempted to participate sympathetically in tribal rituals, however, not only have reported the useful aspects of such practices in primitive society but also have collected information that is of use to science, medicine, religion, and social theory. 

Drugs usually encountered in cultic ceremonies are generally classifiable as narcotic. Few of these are true narcotics, however, in the sense of being numbing or producing sleep. They are called hallucinogens when they produce changes in perception. A hallucinogenic drug may lead to experiences that resemble psychoses, in which case it is called psychotomimetic; under other circumstances, it may cause a quasi-mystical, or psychedelic, experience. 

Most psychedelic drugs tend to stimulate rather than numb the mind, whereas some true narcotics, such as alcohol and opium, in turn stimulate and stupefy the mind at different stages of their physical effect. Most cultic drugs come from plants, though Western cults more recently formed have made use of the active principles of natural drugs in synthetic form and of synthetic analogs of naturally occurring compounds. 

Types of drugs used by cults 

Of more than 100 plants known to have properties that affect the mind, more being discovered every year, only a few of the major drugs used by cults will be referred to here. Though these drugs vary greatly in composition, their effects tend to be similar. Such factors as the personality, mood, and expectation of the user, the setting, the nature of those in charge, and the interpretation of the experience may have a more significant effect on the experience than do the specific properties of the drug. 

At one time or another, such common substances as alcohol, tobacco, coffee, and tea have been used in religious cults, but such use is not common today. 

Hemp, mushrooms, cacti, and their derivatives 

Probably the most widespread plant having psychedelic properties and used in cults is Indian hemp, Cannabis sativa, which grows all over the world except in very cold climates. It is used in religious practices in India and Africa (and probably elsewhere) and is sometimes used illicitly in the United States and Europe. 

Certain mushrooms are used by cultists among the Indians in Latin America, especially in the state of Oaxaca in southern Mexico. The chief species is Psilocybe mexicana, of which the active principle is psilocybin and its derivative psilocin, in their chemical composition and activity not unlike LSD (D-lysergic acid diethylamide); the latter is synthesized from the alkaloids (principally ergotamine and ergonovine) that are constituents of ergot, a growth present in grasses affected by the disease also called ergot. 

Amanita muscaria (fly agaric) is another mushroom having hallucinogenic properties that has not been thoroughly studied. It may be extremely important, since it may have been the natural source of the ritual soma drink of the ancient Hindus and the comparable haoma used by the Zoroastrians (see below History of drug use in religion). Fly agaric, which is extremely toxic, is said to have, in addition to its hallucinogenic properties, the ability to increase strength and endurance; it is said also to be a soporific. 

Indians of Mexico discovered other plants with somewhat similar properties. The tops of the peyote cactus, Lophophora williamsii, may be dried to form the so-called mescal buttons (to be distinguished from the mescal bean, another mind-expanding but highly poisonous plant found in the same area), which are ingested by widely distributed groups of Indians in Mexico, the United States, and Canada during night-long ceremonies that have been described and studied by a number of anthropologists. 

The chief active principle of peyote is an alkaloid called mescaline. Like psilocin and psilocybin, mescaline is reputed to produce visions and other evidences of a mystical nature. Despite claims of missionaries and some government agents that peyote—from the Nahuat word peyot (“divine messenger”)—is a degenerative and dangerous drug, there appears to be no evidence of this among the members of the Native American Church, a North American Indian cult that uses peyote in its chief religious ceremony (see below). Peyote, like most other hallucinogenic drugs, is not considered to be addictive and, far from being a destructive influence, is reputed by cultists and some observers to promote morality and ethical behavior among the Indians who use it ritually. 

Other psychedelic substances 

Spanish missionaries to Mexico in the 16th century described, primarily in derogatory language, another psychedelic substance, called by the Indians ololiuqui and venerated highly. Ololiuqui has been identified as the seeds of the morning glory, Rivea corymbosa (also called Turbina corymbosa); the name has also come to be applied to another morning glory, Ipomoea tricolor (also called I. rubrocaerulea or I. violacea). Since the active principles are the alkaloids D-lysergic and D-isolysergic acids, their properties are very similar to those of LSD, producing visions and mystical experiences. 

Columbus described the ceremonial sniffing of a powder encountered during one of his voyages to the West Indies. Of the many kinds of snuff, the chief variety was called yopo, paricá, or cohoba, a powerful hallucinogen derived from parts of a tree, Piptadenia peregrina. This narcotic snuff may be confused with others, yet not clearly differentiated. 

Another substance used in South America, especially in the Amazon basin, is a drink called ayahuasca, caapi, or yajé, which is produced from the stem bark of the vines Banisteriopsis caapi and B. inebrians. Indians who use it claim that its virtues include healing powers and the power to induce clairvoyance, among others. This drink has been certified by investigators to produce remarkable effects, often involving the sensation of flying. The effects are thought to be attributable to the action of harmine, a very stable indole (structurally related to LSD) that is the active principle in the plant. 

The kava drink, prepared from the roots of Piper methysticum, a species of pepper, and seemingly more of a hypnotic–narcotic than a hallucinogen, is used both socially and ritually in the South Pacific, especially in Polynesia. Iboga, or ibogaine, a powerful stimulant and hallucinogen derived from the root of the African shrubTabernanthe iboga (and, like psilocybin and harmine, a chemical relative of LSD), is used by the Bwiti cult in Central Africa. Coca, source of cocaine, has had both ritual and social use chiefly in Peru. 

Datura, one species of which is the jimsonweed, is used by native peoples in North and South America; the active principle, however, is highly toxic and dangerous. A drink prepared from the shrub Mimosa hostilis that is said to produce glorious visions in warriors before battle, is used ritually in the ajucaceremony of the Jurema cult in eastern Brazil. 

Goals of practitioners 

The drugs used by cults for their hallucinogenic effects were adopted for explicit and implicit religious functions and purposes. The drugs were and are reported to enhance religious experience. Controlled laboratory investigations of the effects of such drugs, performed outside a culturally determined cultic framework, help to make the cults more understandable. 

Ecstasy and union with the divine or sacred 

The loftiest aim of the cultic use of drugs is the pure delight in what is described as a direct experience of God, ultimate reality, the spirits that preside over one’s destiny, or whatever the worshipper may conceive as his object of worship. As a consequence of such worship experience there may ensue a feeling of self-transcendence, sometimes through a melting away of the ego boundaries (with consequent loss of sense of self) and even through the terror of death, resulting in a psychological rebirth that gives a feeling of power and freedom and releases creative energies. 

Drugs have been used ritually to enhance the puberty ordeal through which, among many peoples, a youth is ushered out of childhood and is certified an adult. The functions of the drugs as teachers, leading participants through experiences of spiritual growth, are attested by many members of contemporary drug cults. 

As a means of appropriating such experiences, the rites surrounding the assimilation of the drugs become types of sacraments in which the qualities and the gifts of the gods are appropriated. The visions, self-knowledge, energy, power, and direction reported to be secured from the rite confirm the feeling of the worshipper that he has been in the presence of God or has assimilated some of God’s powers. 

Other specific skills and benefits—either real or the products of fancy—may be extrapolated from this alleged encounter with the gods, such as sexual attractiveness, skill and luck in hunting, protection in war, or even the ability to transcend war and to love one’s enemies. 

Purification, healing, and divination 

Along with the sacramental function of the drug cults is the concept of purification through drug use. This may take the form of certain ritualistic preparations for the ceremony or the observing of certain taboos for days before it, or may be a part of the ceremony itself. Many psychedelic drugs produce nausea, and the consequent vomiting may be looked on as a purging of faults. In more advanced cults the purification may be seen as the pure and ethical living that should both precede and follow the ceremony. 

Closely related to the latter may be the devotional function, viewed in the most primitive drug cults as acts of propitiation of the gods for expected favors and in the more developed cults as acts directed toward the needs and wishes of the god through the cultic experience. Ritual drug taking may also be viewed as an act of devotion in itself. 

In some of the more primitive cults the ordinary participant is relegated to a secondary role, for the priest or shaman may be the one who principally ingests the drug and mediates benefits, real or supposed, to the worshipper or suppliant. Such is the case when healing is the chief function, when the drug is dangerous, or when it is reserved for those persons having the most prestige. Mediation is also likely to occur when divination of the answers to important questions is involved; e.g., whether to set out on a journey or where to find lost property. 

Witchcraft and magic 

Some pharmacological cults do not rise much above the level of witchcraft, with ceremonies expressing the participants’ insecurities, anxieties, and hostilities. This is particularly true of cults operating among a marginal, competitive people, as in the Peruvian cult that uses ayahuasca (Banisteriopsis caapi). This is a syncretistic cult in which primitive magical beliefs are interwoven with minimal Roman Catholic features. 

Bad luck is looked on as the result of the curse of an envious neighbor, and the witch doctor is sought to dispel the curse and, if possible, to turn it onto its originator. At other times illness may be interpreted as the result of possession by evil spirits, and the purpose of the ceremony may be exorcism. In all of these cases the visions produced by the drugs, influenced by the assumptions and desires of the participants, will be interpreted according to the hopes and fears, prejudices, and suspicions of those participants.